The Warriors have it again.
They’ve found that lightning in a bottle; the ability to exercise omnipotence for a stretch of time that leaves your jaw agape and hits you with a welcome brand of whiplash.
It’s a “what the hell just happened” feeling spurred by breakneck scoring in only the most astonishing varieties. At first it was Steph and Klay, with some helpful cohorts. Then Kevin Durant upped the ante.
More than two years after that era of Warriors basketball ceased to exist, a new flavor has emerged with Jordan Poole as the catalyst. On Monday night, despite the newly-minted, ever-evolving nature of this new group, that old feeling reemerged.
Poole was whipping behind-the-back passes, hitting fall-away threes and playing with a general level of borderline disrespectful confidence that looked an awful lot like his backcourt partner, Curry, who, in addition to dominating off the bench, scored this one layup that I still can’t comprehend.
Draymond Green acknowledged the similarities after the 126-106 bludgeoning, saying Poole’s impression of Curry was “incredible.”
It felt too soon to anoint this team after one playoff-opening win on Saturday, and it still might be now. But that feeling of invincibility — that there is literally no answer for this offense at its best — that was rediscovered in earnest on Monday.
There are still those memories of those past Warriors teams that would sleepwalk their way through a first half, then unleash a barrage of threes in the third, sometimes flipping a deficit into an untouchable lead in a quarter. You knew, regardless of the deficit, that the sleeping giant was going to wake up at some point.
We’re getting there with this team. The group of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Jordan Poole, Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green parlayed a four-point burst from Poole into a 16-0 run in the second quarter, turning a 12-point deficit into a 6-point lead.
In the third, they went scorched earth, drubbing the Nuggets for 44 points to the extent that Denver started openly fracturing on the bench. Will Barton and DeMarcus Cousins got after each other and Green, the league’s best instigator, encouraged the crowd to rub it in.
Nikola Jokic lost his cool, got t’d up twice and got tossed. It was agitation via excellence on both ends and a persistent swarm typified by Green, who Steve Kerr said “dominated” the game.
After the game, the tenor of the Nuggets was dour, to put it lightly.
Head coach Michael Malone said, “If we’re fragmented … we have zero chance of winning a game in this series.”
They couldn’t prepare for this lineup because no one had ever seen it. At this point, it’s hard to imagine how you can adequately prepare for this lineup even if you have seen it.
There’s too much athleticism, ball movement, multifaceted scoring ability, defensive pressure and general fluidity for any team to match up well.
Denver is probably wondering what could’ve been if they had Jamal Murray or Michael Porter Jr. right now. They almost certainly won’t get to answer those questions this season.
Instead, they’re getting Steph Curry shimmies, Jordan Poole tongue-out skips down the baseline, Klay Thompson crowd waves and Draymond Green goading everyone into bad decisions, then promptly rubbing them in while roping in the crowd like a conductor of misfortune.
Denver’s Monte Morris acknowledged the mental and physical wear of getting literally laughed off the court.
“They’re out there laughing, dancing around,” Morris said. “Shit’s embarrassing. We gotta be tougher.”
The Nuggets have two home games coming up and it almost feels like they’re talking about this series in the past tense.
That’s what this lineup has done to them in two games and by all accounts, will continue to do in these playoffs.
Give it whatever horrendous moniker you want. The best nicknames tend to emerge organically, over time, of which there has been precious little so far.
Three G, Fast Five, Splash Mob, Liquid Lineup, it doesn’t matter (insert Jimmy Garoppolo meme).
My personal favorite is the WAP lineup, which, uh, stands for “Wiggins And Poole.” Absolutely no misconstruing that one.
Whatever you want to call them, they are playing at an incomprehensibly efficient level on both ends.
In just 11 minutes over two games, it’s a lineup with an offensive rating of 204.3 and a defensive rating of 75.0. That means, theoretically, if you played the entire game with this lineup, given this very small sample size, they’d be expected to outscore their opponent by more than 129 points.
What’s also crucial about their staggering efficiency is that it means less wear and tear.
Stephen Curry scored 34 points in 23 minutes, a feat no one but him has ever accomplished in the playoffs. Klay Thompson led the team with 36 minutes and was somehow the least efficient player on the floor with 21 points on 9-of-19 shooting. Jordan Poole had 29 points in 34 minutes.
Unlike teams like the Celtics, who could possibly offer the best defensive matchup against this team in a theoretical Finals series, the Warriors are getting garbage time minutes for their young players and resting their vets.
Boston, meanwhile, has a 7-man rotation and played Jayson Tatum 45 minutes, Al Horford 41 minutes, Jaylen Brown 40 minutes and Marcus Smart 36 minutes in the first game of a first-round series against Brooklyn which figures to be a grueler.
If the Warriors keep this up, they’re not only reproving their seriousness to win the title, they’re winning the early war of attrition. So many teams struggle to stay healthy for the two-month playoff stretch, and that factor is so often the difference between who secures a championship and who doesn’t.
Golden State won’t run everyone off the floor like they’ve done in these first two games, but they’re netting early results that might go a long way to preserving this lineup when it matters most. And if this lineup is available two months from now, it’s hard to believe the Warriors won’t be taking home another title this season.